Wild Sign Kirill Kaprizov To An Eight-Year Extension
The Minnesota Wild and winger Kirill Kaprizov have agreed to an eight-year, $136 million contract extension.
Minnesota Wild winger Kirill Kaprizov (NHL Images).
It’s a record-setting contract, making the 28-year-old Kaprizov the NHL’s highest-paid player with an average annual value of $17 million.
PuckPedia indicated that Kaprizov has a full no-movement clause throughout the contract, which begins in 2026-27.
SPECTOR’S NOTE: This shouldn’t be surprising. The Wild had no intention of losing their franchise player and the most exciting forward they’ve ever had.
Losing Kaprizov to free agency next summer, or being forced to move him at the March trade deadline if unable to re-sign him by then, would’ve been a huge setback to their hopes of becoming a Stanley Cup contender.
A proven scorer, Kaprizov tallied a career-best 47 goals and 61 assists for 108 points in 2021-22, which is the Wild single-season record. He also tallied 46 goals and 96 points in 2023-24.
Kaprizov’s injury history is a concern, missing 25 games in 2022-23 and 41 games last season. He’ll be 29 when this extension begins, and it’s unlikely this contract will age well during its latter four years.
Nevertheless, when healthy, Kaprizov is the engine that drives the Wild’s offense. Without him, their path toward Stanley Cup contention would be a more difficult one.
It will be interesting to see how Kaprizov’s new contract affects the free-agent market. It’s unlikely that he’ll be the highest-paid player for long, as that honor could go to Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid, regardless of where he ends up on July 1.
It was inevitable for the Wild to finally put Ink to paper in regards to Kirill Kaprizov. Now they have a core of Kirill, Boldy, Rossi, and Faber, plus they have a interesting prospect from the KHL. Not sure about their other prospects in the system and their respective timeline to make the jump to the big club.
$17mill is crazy, I am with you Lyle this will not age well, this is basically the ZP and Suter contracts rolled into one, the wild must be banking on the cap continuing to go up,
Kaprizov is a great talent, but I’ve been saying he is not worth that much money/cap space.
But I’ve also said Minny could not afford to let him leave. It would have been devastating to the team and fanbase.
His agent new that, and played into it.
He got his $, but not sure he has the team around him to win it all.
Totally agree this won’t age well and if he is getting $ 17 million what is Mc David worth…He is a great player but this is an over pay for sure. I get Minnesota wanted to keep him but wow !
Wild dug themselves into a hole with Parise and Suter, never achieving success and they just did it again.
I know the best deserve the most but you have to be very naive to think teammates who fight for a fraction of the contract don’t carry any resentment.
It isn’t a difference of a few million it’s 2.5 times more than the next forward.
It’s 3.5 times more than his centres who had to fight for what they got.
Time will tell.
True HF30 but you can’t help wonder if they are thinking, “we dug ourselves out of those two anchors, and remained quite competitive and drafted wisely *lucky* (with him being a 5th round pick), we shouldn’t have a problem with this big contract either”.
Hf30, if you win, no one cares.If you lose and it’s a contract year,people start pointing fingers.
“When you win” in this case is if you win and the contract disparity is a fact, the only question is what the impact will be.
It isn’t just a matter of what % of contracts are eaten up by the top 3-4 players.
Those 3-4 players usually make close to the same big contracts, not one guy making as much as the next 3 combined.
It’s naive to think there won’t be any repercussions.
The wild did what the wild needed to. They didnt have much leverage, and little reasonable choice to go this direction at this time.
What i am more curious in is how this impacts the market.
Particularly how it impacts Kyle Connor’s next contract. I mean he and his agent have a case to ask for more than yesterday should money be his main objective. His stats over the past 3 years are not far off from Kirill
I agree 1Oiler fan.
Putting the Kaprizov deal into some sort of perspective, going into this season the Wild rank about 11th in the league in terms of % of this year’s cap ($95,500,000) devoted to their 3 highest-cost forwards – 22% on Kaprizov-Boldy-Eriksson-Ek for a total of $21,250,000.
Next season – and barring other moves, of course – with the cap rising to $104,000,000 and Kaprizov’s new deal kicking in, the same 3 will rise to 28% of the cap.
If the current 8 teams at the top of the F list made no changes, their % of the new cap would look like this:
Toronto Matthews-Nylander-Knies $32,500,000 and Edmonton Draisaitl-McDavid-Hyman $32,000,000 both 34% down to 31%;
Vegas Marner-Eichel-Stone $31,500,000 – 33% down to 30%
Dallas F Rantanen-Seguin-Hintz $30,300,000 – 32% down to 29%
NYR F Panarin-Zibanejad-Miller $28,142,857 –
Florida Barkov-Tkachuk-Reinhart $28,125,000 and Colorado MacKinnon-Nelson-Landeskog $28,100,000 – each 30% down to 27%
Tampa Kucherov-Point-Guentzel $28,000,000 – 29% down to 27%.
So, the Wild would wind up right around the middle of the above 8. Of course, this time next year things will have changed for each of Vegas (Eichel), Edmonton (McDavid) and NYR (Panarin) – or for those teams getting any of the 3 should they decide to test the UFA market.
The NYR, Florida and Colorado details all should have appeared as one grouping above
I thought Pastrnak at $11.25M was a good deal for Boston when he signed 2 years ago. With this big market reset, that’s a downright bargain for the next 6 years!
Much like Panarin (I am a Rangers fan), he isn’t worth that for only playing a 90-100 ft game. Neither of them knows how to backcheck or play defense, yet they both lead the league in turnovers.
George very interesting numbers . I am all over this as a bad signing but not far off other teams top players .
I get Boldy and joel Ek are good but think if you were to propose a trade for your comparable i think all teams say know . I think this will age as bad as Suter and Zac
I thought cap maximum as a percentage was 20% . Next year Kaprizov is 16.3% if at 104m . MCD would equate to $20,800 per year.at 20% . Connor in between in a small market . Tough spot forthe Jets
Kirill is an all world talent if wild lets him walk for zip the hockey world goes nuts. Now they say they are crazy for paying too much nobody ever happy. If I were a Wild fan I’d want to keep him.